


Together in this Winter

by JonsaInTheNorth



Series: Heart of the Seasons [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 02:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18459401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonsaInTheNorth/pseuds/JonsaInTheNorth
Summary: Jon heads to Winterfell in search of a final home. Sansa waits for his arrival.





	Together in this Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imaginedragonsfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginedragonsfly/gifts).



> Thanks to everyone for your support on parts 1 and 2! Here's the final part of this series.

**Six years after his wife passes on, Jon Targaryen abdicates in favor of his son.**

After the pomp comes to an end and the coronation is over, he saddles his dark horse and straps a sword to his hip. An aged white wolf trots besides him as he leaves King’s Landing through the Dragon Gate early in the morning, scant flecks of golden light piercing over the Blackwater.

King Eddard, first of his name, sits more comfortably upon the Iron Throne than Jon ever did. Young Ned knows nothing of fierce winter blizzards that blind a man’s vision three inches from his face; he knows nothing of the risen dead that his father and mother fought in the War for the Dawn. But Ned came of age in the Red Keep, surrounded by the politics and intrigue of a new court. He was born to the throne in every way his bastard father was not.

Ned and his pregnant queen met Jon in the courtyard of the castle and embrace him like it is the last time they will ever see him. Ned could fly to him in days, but he is a man now and a king, with a kingdom still recovering from the wars of yesteryear. Rumors spread about a distant, forgotten Blackfyre intent to take the throne, but the pretender does not have a dragon and his parents are not the legendary pair that saved the world.

Jon travels unrecognized along the King’s Road, with his hood drawn over his face at all times. He avoids the taverns and keeps along the way, favoring camps a short distance back from the road. When other travelers appear, Ghost goes beyond Jon’s sight and appears only when they are gone.

Jon is glad to be rid of King’s Landing, the angry Southron heat and constant press of a million people all around. The winds in the Riverlands glance off the water to cool him during the day and the temperature drops lower in the night. An endless summer comes to an end while he travels, just as an age of his life ends.

With each passing day, Jon sits a littler taller in the saddle. He loves Ned and his wife, Elinor Fossoway, but court life aged him more than the twenty-seven years he spent there. His dark hair is streaked with grey, and his back hunches from days spent holding court from the abominable chair even though he has not sat there in years. Ned has run the seven kingdoms in all but name since Dany died, and now Westeros is his for true. Jon thinks of his son often, almost as much as he thinks of Dany. _He will be a better King than I, a great king like his mother was a great queen_. But mostly Jon dreams the memory of whispering white winds and soft summer snows.

They lived a pleasant life King’s Landing, surrounded by their court and the only son they could conceive. Dany desperately wanted a little girl but the gods did not see fit to give them one no matter how much they tried. The city grew unbearable without his wife, without her soft smiles and her gentle touch and simple kindnesses. He loved his wife and he loved his son, but he never loved that city.

Only one place remains where he can finish his own life in peace. Jon is going home.

* * *

**Sansa’s watch begins an hour after the raven arrives.**

Jon would return to Winterfell. Rickon, her eldest son, tells her the news and startles at her pained smile. She sits in the center of the lord’s table, breaking her fast surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Why now, Jon? She removes little Lyarra from her lap and her grandchild toddles back to her mother. What has changed, after all these years?

“The Old King rides North, Mother.” He holds out the curl of parchment. “Ned would have him join our household.”

“It will be good,” she says, fixing her features to a calmer mien and clasping her hands across her lap, “to see him again.”

She told her children, Rickon and Brandon and Cat, little about their uncle, the king. She did not share his love for Winterfell or how he fought to save their home from the Boltons before leaving it forever. Those stories, and any that they learned, came from Arya or Gendry, who fought besides him in the Great War.

The years have not been kind to Sansa, and her grace and elegance have left her. She stays within the keep’s walls except for her daily walks in the godswood to sit beneath the heart tree as her father did so many years before. Her children have certainly never seen her walk the ramparts, a place she has not climbed to since she stopped waiting.

Every day, Sansa paces the battlements for hours and stares achingly at the horizon, her copper hair bright against the white of the North and the black of her mourning gown. Her eyesight has not strained with age in the way her face wrinkled and her bones grew brittle and she is the first to spot each new arrival.

The winter town prospered after the war, filled with Northron refugees and the Queen’s Dothraki warriors. They all spread across the barren North to bring new life, integrating with the smallfolk and free folk until the towns swelled to thrice their pre-war populations. People have even begun calling the winter town Sunrise since the North brought a new dawn, both to the world and to Westeros. In that dawn, they all have grown. _Has he?_

Sansa does not know what she expects from this reunion but how could she say no, when a part of her was still hoping all these years? Her heart beats a steady rhythm in anticipation, but each horse or caravan upon the road is just some visiting lord come to plead his cause or trading merchant come to hawk his wares or traveling bard come to win her favor or at least a meal with his song.

She waits to see him, to discover him again, because even though she is surrounded by the love of her children, her heart still burns for him. 

* * *

**It takes two months of wandering to reach Winterfell.**

It has been years since last Jon saw its walls. The banners hanging from the battlements represent a dozen Northron houses, suggesting that the Starks maintain a thriving court of advisors and companions. He gazes above the gate, to a spot of red standing where so often he stood with Sansa. _Is that you? Do you remember me, sister? Did you ever love me, cousin?_

Lord Rickon rules the North and Winterfell in his mother’s name, and Jon stops dead after he first trots into the courtyard. The young lord is nearly a duplicate of his grandfather, standing solemn just as Jon imagines his uncle-after would have looked at twenty. Young Brandon is sixteen and looks so much like Robb that Jon almost cries before them all. The youngest of the Stark children, Catelyn, is nearing twelve, with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes exactly like her mother’s.

The family stands solemn, only a year since Lord Beron’s passing, but Rickon greets Jon with a fondness unexpected in someone he has never met. He may look like Eddard Stark, but there is a wildness in his eyes that reminds Jon of Arya.

Arya jumps at Jon with a frightening excitement, eyes aglow as she wraps her arms around him. She visited King’s Landing two years prior, but it felt like a lifetime since he has seen her. Her children, Argella and Robb and Lyanna, all inherited the Baratheon look from their father Gendry, but all of their spirit from their mother.

Yet in this crowd of family, one glaring absence stirs uncomfortable feelings in Jon’s heart. Rickon mumbles apologies for his mother, says she is unwell and does not stir, but Jon thinks of the woman on the battlements and presses to greet her immediately. 

* * *

**He stands in silence for minutes after he his presented to her before she finally speaks.**

“Jon.” His name burns like acid on her tongue. She has not said it aloud in years, letting more than just the icy fields of the North keep them apart. He has always “Queen Daenerys and her husband” or “my cousin in King’s Landing” or simply “the King.” Her silence was a wall between them, too.

Sansa’s heart beats faster than she ever thought it could. She sets a weathered hand upon her breast and breaths deeply. “Why have you come?”

“I missed home.” 

Silence. Nothing can bring her to speak, although she wants to shout: You gave up your home when you left and never returned even though I needed you. He stares at her, he steady gaze like fire on her face, burning a hole through her soul. Sansa rips her eyes away from him. She cannot bear to look at him, and watches Ghost instead.

“Lady Sansa, is my presence a trouble for you?”

That she can answer truthfully. “Yes.”

Jon sighs and settles across from her. Ghost settles between them and curls into a ball before the fire like he has a hundred times before. She smiles but stays silent. Many years have passed since Ghost has slept at her feet, but still he remembers. _Does Jon?_

“Why did you lock me out, for all these years?” Jon asks, his brow curling in the way she once loved so much. “We were family, once.”

Sansa tightens her hands in her lap, not wanting to answer. The silence stretches and still she feels the heat of his gaze.

“You left me here alone, without protection from the people who clamored for my claim and cared naught for my heart. You chose the South over us. Over me.” Her last words are but a whisper, but Jon understands her better than he’s ever understood her in the past. Sansa glances up to study him, finally, taking in the weary lines of his long face and they grey-brown of his hair. The sharp cheekbones and solemn grey eyes, the black tunic unadorned by either dragon or wolf. Maybe she was wrong, to think he had to choose. _Maybe he’s neither Stark nor Targaryen. But maybe he is both._

“The truth of my parents, of everything. It was too much to bear.” Jon reaches for her hands. His touch is cool and warm all at once, a true son of ice and fire.

“I loved you Jon. I could have helped you.” Sansa meets his eyes. “I still do, still can.”

“I…..I did not know.” Jon's voice fractures like the ice spread in an impossibly thin layer across a pond. He leans in and rests his forehead upon hers, listening for her heart in the darkness. Their breath mingles and then, gently, he presses a kiss warm enough to melt the ice within her.

* * *

**Every hour in her presence awakens an older version of himself that Jon thought lost forever**.

Soon, things are almost as they were before the Battle for the Dawn. Jon breaks his fast with her family and Arya’s then joins Gendry, Arya, and some of the children for weapons practice in the yard. After, Sansa and he walk the ramparts like old times and talk about everything, from those simpler times to the politics of their new world. He always imagined that they lived happy and safe in Winterfell and joining that life blossoms a fresh, bright garden his heart. He reserves the afternoons for rides into the countryside with Ghost, meetings with the lords and smallfolk who want to see their king, or quiet time spent with members of the household. At night, all the Starks gather for supper and a respite besides the fire. Inevitably Sansa and Jon are the last to return to their own chambers, so caught up in their conversations that the others drift off and leave them speaking.

On his twelfth day in Winterfell, Sansa guides him away from the stairs leading to the battlements and instead heads for the godswood. Jon follows after without a question, although he dared not enter alone since he returned to the castle. A soft summer snow falls through the thick leaves and melts when it kisses the ground. Sansa sweeps her skirts around her and settles on the bench beneath the heart tree.

Jon marvels at how little the godswood has changed in all the years he’s been away. He turns slowly and takes it in, the blood red leaves and weeping faces, the dark trees and black pool, before finally settling his gaze back on Sansa. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted to remind you.”

“Remind me what?”

“That you’re a Stark.” She smiles at him, a small thing, still enough to light her entire face. “You’ll always be a Stark. And even though you were gone for many years, Winterfell is still your home. We are still your home.”

Jon kneels before her and takes her hands in his. “I loved you, too. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.”

Sansa glances down at the ground. Finally, she meets his eyes, blue to grey, heart to heart. “I still love you. I always will.”

* * *

**They marry quietly beneath the blood red heart tree half a year later.**

The first Winter snow since the Long Night falls heavy around them, dusting Sansa’s hair and the crown of blue roses that Catelyn wove for the occasion. Her sons gives her away, and her daughter scatters petals as they walk towards the waiting King. Arya and Gendry watch on with their children and Sansa’s granddaughter propped against Arya’s hip. There are no others in attendance. 

Eddard wrote to refuse his invitation and accuse Jon of betraying his mother, who raised him in fire and blood more than to watch for the winds of winter.

The cold wind bites against her cheeks, turning them splotchy shades of pink and red. Yet, she has never felt more beautiful. As Jon touches his lips gently to hers, she thanks the gods for bringing him back to her even after all these years. She finds herself crying even as the tension and heartache unwinds within her chest, but he kisses away the tears before kissing her lips again, deeper this time, and whispers so only she can here, "Now is not the time for tears, my love. We've had so many years for that. Now is the time for joy. For us."

"For us." Sansa nods before kissing him in earnest again, then pulls back to see the face Arya makes at both of them.

As they feast together with their court, Jon whispers how this was the wedding he always dreamed of, in the North of his mother and the gods of his childhood. She agrees, for this was her dream for years as well. Years before she found Beron, a man she loved, but never like this. After, as Jon sleepily pulls her close into the night, Sansa curls into the warmth of him and knows the feeling of more than contentness and love and peace, but joy and burning passion and yielding fully to your heart's greatest desire. 

Together, they grow old and watch the years go by.

A daughter of Fire comes north to marry Rickon’s firstborn son, and they seem themselves reflected in the pair. Their grandchildren take to each other despite their differences, her careful courtesies and his wild wolf blood, her incomparable skill with a sword and his preference for chasing his hounds and galloping round the Northron hills for hours. They fall in love, slowly, while careful, knowing eyes watch them from the ramparts and the lord's table. Cregan and Alyssa will have the life they never knew, with summers and children together that Jon and Sansa never had.

* * *

**They live to greet a new Spring but not much longer.**

Within two weeks, Arya finds them quietly holding hands in their bed. She rose to find them when they did not appear for neither morning meal nor their walk around the walls of Winterfell. They passed quietly both in their sleep, as if they had planned to make the journey together.

Rickon breaks tradition when he buries them together in the crypts. Eddard flies North to say his farewells to his father and meet his recently born grandchild and namesake, but leaves after three, short days.

* * *

**In the centuries that follow, the singers write many songs about their love.**

Two wolves, parted by war and politics, united in their final years. It is sad and bittersweet, but the smallfolk love it all the same. The Dragon’s Wolf, A Time for Wolves, After the Years- all dedicated to Jon and Sansa reunited at the end of their lives.

But their great-great-granddaughter’s favorite song will always be These Seasons Changing, all forlorn sadnesses that crescendo into the happiness of a winter warm with love.

**Author's Note:**

> You can hit me up at [tumblr](https://www.starksinthenorth.tumblr.com) for more Jonsa fun.


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